Death of a language

This is kinda sad… a whole language dies along with the last survivor of a tribe from the Andaman Islands.

Her name was Boa Sr, and was the last remaining member of the Bo tribe, and was the last speaker of an ancient tongue – the Bo language has been around for over 65,000 years! It’s amazing to think – with her, a whole language is wiped out. Sadly, her final years were mostly spent feeling isolated, since she had nobody else to talk to in her native language. The only other indigenous tribe in that region are the Sentilinese, who are aggressive to all outsiders, and famously fired arrows at an Indian helicopters sent in to relieve the victims of the tsunami on 12/26/04.

There are many endangered languages in the world, though it is hard to say exactly how many. It’s difficult to work out precisely how many languages are spoken throughout the world today – Unesco have an interactive map where you can see just how many known languages are deemed ‘critically endangered’ – it’s a lot higher than you’d think.